Is Coogan’s Dr Strangelove as good as Sellers’s? Of course not

Stanley Kubrick’s surreal movie Dr Strangelove is a response to the fear of nuclear annihilation which obsessed every citizen in the western world from the end of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The play’s co-adaptors, Sean Foley and Armando Iannucci, are old enough to recall that fear – but they’ve omitted any sense of collective anxiety from their adaptation. It’s a just a larky tribute to the movie, like a sketch show. Daft not disturbing.

The story starts with an insane American, General Ripper, ordering a squadron of B-52s to nuke Russia before the communists can overwhelm the United States. This prompts his amiable British colleague, Captain Mandrake, to ask him to call off the attack. Steve Coogan plays Mandrake as a bumbling Home Counties swot with the diction and mannerisms of King Charles.